Uproar in Senate as Sekibo submits petition against Ameachi

In from Timothy Enietan-Matthews (Nation’s capital) … .

It was another rancorous time at the Senate on Wednesday, as Senators elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, vehemently protested an attempt to submit a petition against the ministerial nomination of former Rivers State governor, Rotimi Ameachi.

Trouble started when Senator George Sekibo, representing Rivers East Senatorial District, raised a point of order to submit the petition. The APC senators kicked by shouting, “no, no, noooooo.”

The Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, however granted Sekibo room to submit the petition, which he said was forwarded by one of his constituents.

Saraki, who ignored the protests of his party members, referred the petition to the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions to investigate the allegations against Amaechi and report back to the Senate.

Speaking with journalists in his office shortly after the plenary, Sekibo said the petition was based on an investigation carried out by a Port Harcourt-based group, called the Integrity Group.

Sekibo said the same petition had earlier been forwarded to President Muhammadu Buhari and the various anti-graft agencies in the country about two months ago when the group concluded its investigation.

He said, “The Integrity Group, based in Port Harcourt, believes in transparency, fighting against corruption. They (Integrity Group) believe in good governance and effective utilisation of every fund that is allocated to any state government.

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“They went into a research and discovered that over N70bn were transferred from hard currency account to places outside the country. A petition on this note was written to Mr. President. I believe the President has not read it.

“If he has read it, he may not have hurriedly nominated Rotimi Amaechi to be a minister. Amaechi is qualified to be a minister, but when issues of corruption and fraud are openly X-rayed by people, it is necessary for Mr. President to take a critical look and examine the allegations whether they are true or not.”

Reacting to the action of the APC senators, a Peoples Democratic Party member representing Delta Central Senatorial District, Senator Ighoyota Amori, lamented the development, stressing that such behaviour would send negative signals to Nigerians.

The State Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mr. Chris Finebone, said Sekibo lacked the basic knowledge of how Amaechi administration worked.

Finebone recalled in a statement issued in Port Harcourt on Wednesday that Amaechi had supported Sekibo’s second term bid for the Senate against the wish of the current governor of the state, describing the lawmaker as a man that bit the finger that fed him.

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